[vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir

2003-08-21 Thread Dave Richardson - Lists
I have a filter that moves incoming virus found msgs in my Admin 
account to a subfolder so that I can observe what kind of virus 
flow/traffic is hitting my domains.  I had intended to write a little 
perl/mrtg processor and make some pretty graphs to WOW! my customers.

And then this asswipe SoBig variant worm hits this week and I've got 
thousands of virus found notices now, still arriving at almost 1 per 
minute.

I want to physically pull the mail message files out of the Admin user's 
virus found folder (below INBOX) and just save them in a tar.gz file 
until I write my scripts and process them.

Q: Any harm in leaving qmail/vpopmail up and running while working at 
the file system level to move the messages out of the Maildir tree?
I DO NOT want to risk damaging this account, since it's my real Admin 
account.

Help appreciated.
Thx,D.



Re: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir

2003-08-21 Thread John Simpson
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On Thursday, Aug 21, 2003, at 09:07 US/Eastern, Dave Richardson - Lists 
wrote:
 Q: Any harm in leaving qmail/vpopmail up and running while working at 
 the file system level to move the messages out of the Maildir tree?
 I DO NOT want to risk damaging this account, since it's my real Admin 
 account.

don't ever touch anything in a tmp directory unless no mail-related 
software is running- no qmail-send, no IMAP or POP3 server (i.e. the 
machine is in single-user mode.) any files you find in a tmp 
directory are half-written messages which are in the process of being 
delivered to the maildir. once the file is totally written it is then 
renamed into the new directory, where it is available all at once. 
(other mail systems occasionally run into issues when they try to read 
a message while it's being delivered- using maildirs immediately does 
away with that issue.)

other than that it shouldn't be dangerous, although it's not the best 
idea in the world. if you write the script as a cron job once a minute 
you're introducing the risk of a race condition (the message may make 
it to your email program before the cron job fires.) and if you try to 
improve your odds in the race by running in a loop and checking every 
five seconds, you're still keeping the CPU busy and there's no 
guarantee you're going to win the race for any given message.

a better solution would be to use maildrop or procmail or something 
similar to filter the message on its way into the maildir. this way if 
a message comes in that you want to save elsewhere, it gets saved there 
directly and never touches your real mailbox at all- no need to worry 
about timing.

maildrop knows how to handle maildirs, i'm not sure if procmail does or 
not.

- ---
| John Simpson - KG4ZOW - Programmer at Large |
| [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.jms1.net/ |
- ---


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Re: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir

2003-08-21 Thread Michael Bowe

- Original Message - 
From: Dave Richardson - Lists [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2003 11:07 PM
Subject: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir


 I want to physically pull the mail message files out of the Admin user's
 virus found folder (below INBOX) and just save them in a tar.gz file
 until I write my scripts and process them.

 Q: Any harm in leaving qmail/vpopmail up and running while working at
 the file system level to move the messages out of the Maildir tree?
 I DO NOT want to risk damaging this account, since it's my real Admin
 account.


I do that sort of thing all the time (delete email files directly out of
peoples maildir's)

Shouldnt cause any problems (except maybe mess up that user's quota... which
can be fixed by also zapping their maildirsize file)

Michael.




Re: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir

2003-08-21 Thread Oden Eriksson
torsdagen den 21 augusti 2003 16.30 skrev Michael Bowe:
 - Original Message -
 From: Dave Richardson - Lists [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2003 11:07 PM
 Subject: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir

  I want to physically pull the mail message files out of the Admin user's
  virus found folder (below INBOX) and just save them in a tar.gz file
  until I write my scripts and process them.
 
  Q: Any harm in leaving qmail/vpopmail up and running while working at
  the file system level to move the messages out of the Maildir tree?
  I DO NOT want to risk damaging this account, since it's my real Admin
  account.

 I do that sort of thing all the time (delete email files directly out of
 peoples maildir's)

 Shouldnt cause any problems (except maybe mess up that user's quota...
 which can be fixed by also zapping their maildirsize file)

 Michael.

As per DJB docs one should taint the dir before messing with it.

-- 
Regards // Oden Eriksson, Deserve-IT.com



Re: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir

2003-08-21 Thread Oden Eriksson
fredagen den 22 augusti 2003 16.41 skrev Oden Eriksson:
 torsdagen den 21 augusti 2003 16.30 skrev Michael Bowe:
  - Original Message -
  From: Dave Richardson - Lists [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2003 11:07 PM
  Subject: [vchkpw] Pulling raw messages out of a maildir
 
   I want to physically pull the mail message files out of the Admin
   user's virus found folder (below INBOX) and just save them in a
   tar.gz file until I write my scripts and process them.
  
   Q: Any harm in leaving qmail/vpopmail up and running while working at
   the file system level to move the messages out of the Maildir tree?
   I DO NOT want to risk damaging this account, since it's my real Admin
   account.
 
  I do that sort of thing all the time (delete email files directly out of
  peoples maildir's)
 
  Shouldnt cause any problems (except maybe mess up that user's quota...
  which can be fixed by also zapping their maildirsize file)
 
  Michael.

 As per DJB docs one should taint the dir before messing with it.

He he he, I meant make it sticky, gotta have some more coffey now ;)

-- 
Regards // Oden Eriksson, Deserve-IT.com